


Fever

by lonerofthepack



Series: Taken 'verse [13]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Ambiguous Character Death, Biting, Dark sex potion, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Implied Torture, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Consensual Touching, Rape/Non-con Elements, Threat of Rape, Torture, Whumptober 2020, Withdrawal, cursing, date rape elements, drugged, general kidnapping badness, idk folks if you've read the others its more of the same shit and it isn't very nice, implied starvation, non-consensual substance use, plot relevant pumpkin juice, poisoned, threat of pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:20:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27657437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack
Summary: Written for the 2020 Whumptober prompt: Do These Tacos Taste Funny To You?: Poisoned | Drugged | WithdrawalDying is... Well, it isn’t his worst option, but it isn’t his favorite, either.“Is something the matter, Director Graves?”“Trying to decide,” he answers, not nearly so distracted as he lets himself sound, studying the other witches and wizards in the room.“Do elaborate,” Grindelwald commands, and affects to look deeply intrigued, leaning back in his austere, straight-backed chair like it’s a throne, and taking his wine with him.“To whom I owe a drink.”
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald
Series: Taken 'verse [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951963
Kudos: 15
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Fever

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, I think the tags mostly cover it; that said, the end part is a little less ambiguous with the rape than I usually go for. Mild spoiler for the sake of warning below. Other than that, this is essentially an extended date-rape scene with little to redeem it. Your mileage may vary considerably. 
> 
> And yes, I realize that I'm half-way through November, and it's been more than a week, but thesis is happening to me, so it's happening to you as well. Have some cathartic violent tragedy about it.
> 
> Spoiler:  
> he wakes up in bed with Grindelwald a week after the beginning of the fix, mid-penetration, and Grindelwald picks up where they'd left off the night before, and implies heavily that he'd be hurt if he didn't respond favorably/participate in his own rape.

It isn’t a surprise, exactly — Grindelwald’s minions didn't exactly like him.

They didn't like him eating at the high table like a guest, didn't like him warming Grindelwald’s bed--as if he had a choice, or any desire for the job. Didn't like his resistance or disrespect, or the attention Grindelwald paid him for it, and they definitely didn't like that Grindelwald had already proved that his life was valued over their version of fun. Or, at least it was after Grindelwald’s own interest in the sport had waned.

He generally took it as a compliment: there were far better people in the world whose hatred he could have earned, whose enmity he might have felt a moment’s grief over.

Generally, though, pumpkin juice doesn’t taste quite —

And alright, he’s getting what he deserves, drinking _fucking_ pumpkin juice. 

But in his defense, it’s pumpkin juice or a wine that had made Grindelwald lean forward at the table and watch every single sip he took of it avidly, which had been so deeply discomforting that he’s never touched the stuff again. 

It’s perhaps besides the point that he doesn’t have any particular fondness for dry reds, but when a Dark Wizard stares like that, especially one as typically aloof as Gellert Grindelwald, one doesn’t mess around with transmogrifiable liquids. Better to drink the best vehicle for poisons ever brewed in a dented tin vat and decanted into cutesy little bottles intended for school children, then end up the unwitting power-source for some half-mad blood curse.

He’d requested water with dinner exactly once; it had been a calculated risk, of sorts. The entire room had laughed themselves hoarse; that had turned into being half-drowned half-a-dozen times as the evening's live entertainment, and would have gone on for at least another half-dozen, if he hadn’t broken one minion’s arm and nearly flooded the place with the uncontrolled aguamenti. The theme had shifted to a liberal round of cruciatus until Grindelwald had had enough of watching him twitch; he’d wanted to discuss the finer points of Divination Mahjong instead. 

_He_ had expected to amuse himself with Percival's shock and fear, and gotten aggressive sass to smirk at instead. And water damage on his fancy painted tiles. 

Anyway. Some mistakes simply aren’t worth making twice.

—but deserved or not, pumpkin juice doesn’t typically leave the creeping ice-shard feeling of impending death crawling down his throat.

Well, shit.

There are a couple of options, he supposes.

The MACUSA healers always said not to try and self-induce vomiting in a suspected poisoning, but he’s willing to bet that they hadn’t really intended that advice for surviving a pit of vipers who would watch him kick it for giggles. Vomiting on his plate at dinner is sure to come with a host of consequences — chief among them that he’d not be getting dinner for some time. They don’t feed him well enough that that’s an especially comfortable consequence, his hands already shake on the cutlery without adding poison to the mix.

Grindelwald would probably shove a bezoar down his throat, if it comes to that, but he hates to give the bastard even that much satisfaction. Not when his back still aches when it’s cold (it’s always fucking cold) from the last lashing, and he’s only been spared bed sport this past week because Grindelwald’s been away. It’s anyone’s best guess, which particular degradation Grindelwald would take in payment for voluntarily requested medical assistance--his repertoire is impressively varied.

Dying is... 

Well, it isn’t his worst option, but it isn’t his favorite, either.

“Is something the matter, Director Graves?”

“Trying to decide,” he answers, not nearly so distracted as he lets himself sound, studying the other witches and wizards in the room. He hardly knows any of their names: Grindelwald is liberal with pet names when he’s fond, and he’s not fond of many of these people. And they’re all accomplished criminals, or most of them are; names are not exactly bandied about in the castle, in front of the very high-ranking if firmly captured and thoroughly disgraced auror.

“Do elaborate,” Grindelwald commands, and affects to look deeply intrigued, leaning back in his austere, straight-backed chair like it’s a throne, and taking his wine with him.

“To whom I owe a drink.”

That earns him a few looks, some appraising, some merely measured. Doubtless there’s some manner of wager, on who takes him out of play first. But there’s only one hesitation, and he knows the face, if not the name.

He stands— doesn’t wobble, not yet, thought standing feels weird in a way that is definitely consistent with a slow, miserable death. Doesn’t need to round the table, which is better for the dramatics of it all, and pauses significantly in front of the man who fancied himself his murderer.

“Let’s trade,” he says, with a bright smile that any number of his aurors would have been very glad was not directed at _them_ , and swaps goblets with as slick a move as he could manage — his fingertips are tingling. “Cheers,” he adds, and drinks it down. Diluting the poison could only help mitigate it. Certainly doesn’t hurt that minions appaurently get a lovely pale lager, the sort he hasn’t had since the winter of 1917, while he’s stuck with cursed wine or fucking pumpkin juice. 

Which his intended victim is pointedly not looking at.

“Not thirsty?”

Grindelwald says something — and even Percival’s German is passable enough to know that the words are a strangely gentle scolding not to be rude, weighed with menace. 

His knees are weakening when he puts his pilfered goblet back on the table, empty, to stare challenge at the man who’s probably killed him. He’d had three sips, maybe four of the pumpkin juice. It doesn’t bode well for the nameless minion if a few mouthfuls of liquid are enough to affect him this badly so quickly.

He can’t quite master the smile— it’s a little _too_ cold and a little _too_ smug for the man he’d wanted to be, once; it suits this hellhole rather too well for his tastes. It’s a little too easy to enjoy the creeping pale and the gleam of fear-sweat starting to dampen this acolyte’s hairline.

But if he’s going to die, isn’t it a grand thing: to look his killer in the eye or close enough and _know_ it won’t go well for him. A finer thing still, to inconvenience the man who’s taken him and subjected him to barbarism of every conceivable sort.

Speak of the devil: Grindelwald snaps something with an edge of command. Not quite imperius, Percival thinks, but no more distant kin than the shock-collar he’s got resting at his throat. And it’s a foul bit of work; any other time he’d cough pointedly at the tangible weight of dark magic boiling past him.

The minion seizes the goblet of pumpkin juice. He babbles something as well, some plea or explanation, also in German, half-choking as he drinks.

Percival thinks, for a terrible half-second, that he likely shouldn’t be so pleased. He’s likely killed the man. Not his first, of course, but he’d promised himself more than a decade ago, that if he ever came to enjoy it, it was time to turn in his badge.

Ominously, Grindelwald barks out a single crack of laughter. He waves a careless hand, a wordless demand that makes the collar tingled and hum threateningly.

“Come sit, Director; I think you will enjoy this.”

Well. What did it matter, anyway. There wasn’t any going back, and he’d cheerfully kill a handful more, given the first opportunity.

“Doubt it,” he denies, but moves before the collar can do more than prickle angrily along his nape.

“Perhaps not,” Grindelwald allows, standing to pull out his chair, like a courtier dancing mocking attendance to a lady of rank, complete with the brush of lips to the back of his hand.

Cheerfully. Gleefully, even.

It’s easier to allow it — he’s not often faster with a retaliation than Grindelwald is the threat of agony. But if he’s dying, and he’s beginning to truly _hope_ he is, between that laugh and the cold, sickly ache starting to hollow him out, promising proper agony if the minion's stifled whimpers are anything to go by, then swiping at Grindelwald for the presumption is one of the last times he’ll have the pleasure of resistance.

The sting of having struck was as short-lived as the swell of achievement, just as he'd known it would be. He's actually managed quite the slap, for how awkward it was, how little space he had. Hasn't actually managed to get at his eyes, but any blow that actually landed was to be commended, somewhere back in the tiny private part of his brain that carved out a mental scoreboard. 

A pale jawline was blooming angry red--he'd pay for it, of course, the mad amusement in Grindelwald's face was already chilling. But a point, nonetheless. 

"Tell me, Director; how familiar are you with poisons of the _Fierbinte_ morphology?"

The minion--Merlin, he hates not knowing names, hates more that he knows the man prefers a specific electricity spell to cruciatus and has all the creativity of a brick when it comes to any other form of torment— even Gnarlack's dumbest enforcers back home have more macrebe artistry about a beating than this nameless acolyte of Grindelwald's, who's _probably_ managed to kill him.

The minion has collapsed forward, whimpering thinly into the tablecloth, clutching at his belly. No one else at the table seems to dare look at him.

It’s becoming both more and less likely that he’s dying: the ache is settling out to a feverish sort of feeling, cold and hot in time with his pulse, a burning sort of pain in his guts and the first shiver-shake of progressive muscle weakness. It’s neither familiar nor pleasant, but that is par for the course in fucking Nurmengard, and it certainly feels like he’s going to die, the cramping of his belly and seizing stiffnessof his muscles, but unless Grindelwald has grown bored of indulging his life in the last five minutes— not impossible, but— he’s entirely too calm. And asking questions that Percival certainly isn't going to like the answers to.

“Boiling poisons,” he grits—that apparently hadn’t been one of those optional questions, not with how the collar trickles lightning down his spine. They’re a dangerous class of potions, a step or two removed from the fever inducer needed to treat Dragon Pox; volatile and not nearly expensive enough to make to limit who might use them, but geographically dependent on a few types of fungi and a rather specific preparation of runespoor venom. Not common in New York, but he's heard colleagues from other countries complain bitterly. It’s a messy sort of death, if he remembers it correctly.

“Fierbinte,” Grindelwald continues, with a head-tilt nod, in a sing-song lecturing tone that is only slightly easier to bear than most mild tortures, “Is used to inflame a person with fever. This is the caldura variation that Florin has given you.”

He flinches as Florin’s whimpering cuts out — he can’t tell at this distance if he’s dead, or merely passed out. He’s — it’s a cold sort of sweat, prickling in his hair, slicking down his spine, as his body heats and finds the castle that much colder. The shivering has already started, achingly tight and bound to take more energy than the meager meal he managed.

“Fast-acting, of course,” Grindelwald adds and smiles thinly, “Your stoicism is commendable, my dear Director; most would have already have begun begging for reprieve, I think.”

“What good would that do.” There were--well, not antidotes, he didn’t think, but cures; various neutralizing potions that would help. But those were dependent on having them on hand or brewing them fresh, and he didn’t exactly have the wherewithal here to do that, and if this wasn’t going to kill him, Grindelwald wasn’t going to so much as lift a pinky, not for him, not for his own follower. 

Begging still wasn’t something he felt inclined to do. It only ever spurred the madman to new heights of depravity.

“What indeed? The Caldura variation of Fierbinte is a variety of aphrodisiac — a passion fever, you might say.” Grindelwald punctuates the statement by seizing the hand that had struck him, the one not curling protectively around the growing pain in Percival’s belly, in a cruel grip. He flips it, vulnerable wrist to the ceiling and sets his teeth against the blue veins even before Percival can register the twinging complaint of the joints.

“Go fuck yourself,” Percival snaps, yanking and getting pressure that would surely leave marks, even if it didn’t cut him— and sucks air at the flare of lust, a sharp spike in his belly and then agony, serrated claws against his insides that has him curling, the biting and the joint pain forgotten in favor of protecting the core of himself, which was on fire --

—hurt _hurtpainowhurt_ — 

The collar follows a moment later for the disrespect, a different flavor of agony that dims his vision to grey for a heartbeat.

“—I don’t believe it offers the victims much pleasure, but most accounts indicate indulging the needs that the Caldura Fierbinte sparks does shorten the duration and perhaps even the pain by some days.”

He was learning new things every day, during this kidnapping; like the worst sort of masterclass seminar on Dark Magic anyone could ever have dreamed up.

“Thought I’d made myself clear,” he pants, instead of taking the pragmatic route. Idiot, idiot, idiot— what’s a bit more rape, if it’ll make this fade faster?

“Oh, I had hoped you would say something like that.”

 _Fucking_ — 

He wakes. Warily. It’s probably a mistake.

It’s definitely a mistake, as the headache wakes with him, blooming sharp and violent behind his eyes.

Caldura Fierbinte carries a hell of a withdrawal, he's learned; it isn’t addictive, precisely, so much as magically parasitic. But even a single dose is plenty to cascade into some firestorm of hex-potion magic, and stepping down that daily dose by a third seems to be the only thing that keeps him even moderately functional — if something so much closer to ‘bitch in heat’ than his usual chilly bearing could ever be considered functional.

It’s been. Probably a week? No, longer. He’d managed nearly two days, holding out, and nearly a third of the second day had been gone before he’d begged prettily enough that Grindelwald had let someone fuck him. Lecturing on the wretched stuff all the while, like Percival couldn’t feel it chewing on his nervous system like rats, and demanding Percival hold his gaze, making the new minion fucking him _stop_ whenever he failed, whenever he blinked or drooped in exhaustion. 

It’d been another full day of that sort of fuckery before Grindelwald had forgiven enough to punish him ‘properly’ for the slap and the sass.

 _Those_ wounds still sting.

“Mmm, insatiable, aren’t you,” Grindelwald murmured, biting at his shoulder, hard, to draw some slick little rune against Percival’s skin with his tongue, something that brings him full inside Percival without any warm up, and uses Percival’s trapped magic to do it.

He groans into the pillow, same as he had yesterday morning, and the day before that--it hurt, to go from blissfully unconscious cockwarmer to mid-fuck with only the tacky remenants of last night to ease the way, Grindelwald’s hips rolling with no particular interest in how sore he was after days of this. And Caldura isn’t a potion for pleasure, but a weapon, same as any Dark thing, designed to hurt. There won’t be even the endorphin-rush haze from the pain, nor any satisfying orgasm— most of the time, no _unsatisfying_ orgasm, either, just the build of boiling pressure that gave way to a different sort of flash-in-the-pan pain.

He groans again as teeth dig hard into his shoulder, layering over day-old bruises. They’d split open with another few degrees of pressure; Grindelwald had healed over broken-open bites twice now. He liked Percival bloodied and marked, and liked him whole enough to do it again afresh whenever he wanted.

“Come now, my dear Director — you _do_ know better than to get lazy, don’t you?”

He did. And it was better to keep Grindelwald pleased in bed, than risk one or more of the minions. Healing charms were all well and good, and he’d never been so grateful for them in all his life as now, but the wounds still _hurt_ , and well.

Grindelwald’s minions didn’t exactly like him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading


End file.
